After The Smoke Has Cleared
by Redlance-ck
Summary: In a world where nothing is ever as it seems, Myka is sure of one thing. Spoilers for season four.


They'd won.

The odds, towering as tall as the shadow of evil bearing over them and belonging to a man named Walter Sykes, had been stacked against them. But they hadn't cowered in the face of it, they'd fought with all they had, and they'd won. Artie had swept in, saved them from the ropes of the Mary Celeste, and proceeded to tell them all exactly what they needed to do and why. As if he'd been struck by a lightening bolt that carried the future upon its jagged back. Myka had accepted it, mostly, because sometimes Artie just **knew** things. Sometimes he swung in to save the day at the last second by pulling the right kind of artifact from his bag of tricks. But Helena hadn't wanted to let it go. She'd badgered him all the way back to Leena's, where Mrs Frederic was waiting for them. But still she'd quietly asked him questions until Myka's hand on her arm had stilled her and tired green eyes had searched her face. Until full lips curved upwards in a small smile and she'd asked H.G. to come with her.

And there was nothing Helena would refuse Myka.

They take the stairs in silence, the taller woman leading the way and worrying absently at her lower lip as she walks. There were too many thoughts trying to navigate their way through brain, tripping over one another like a cascading waterfall of rocks, and she can't make sense of them. But she doesn't need to really.

Because the one thing that **does** make sense to her is at her back, following her wordlessly into her bedroom and closing the door behind them.

When Helena turns to face her, Myka feels her breath catch. Inexplicable and unexpected, and a strangled noise leaves her without warning. Her eyes fill at the sound of it and her lips part in a smile that sway back and forth between happy and sad, lingering somewhere so deeply in between the two that Helena has no hope of unearthing the meaning behind it. But its appearance, and that of the tears in glittering eyes, startle her and she takes a step forward, frown creasing her forehead.

"Myka?" The name is barely past her lips before there's a blur of motion. Myka crosses the space she'd so recently put between them and her folded arms spread to warp around the shorter woman's frame.

There is silence. And Helena stands unmoving in the midst of it as she feels the pressure of the body against her own. The arms wrapping around her, clinging to her as if she might disappear at any moment.

Like she had done so many times before. When they hadn't been able to touch at all.

"We almost died." Myka's voice cracks, buried as it is under the weight of her emotions, raw and intense. The words seem to breathe new life back into the inventor and finally her own arms are moving to cradle the other woman to her.

And she fights against the urge to gasp as Myka's head turns and warm breath ghosts against her neck.

"But we didn't." She reminds her, and H.G.'s voice is tremulous in a way that Myka isn't used to hearing. The agent blinks and lets a tear escape, before allowing her eyes to remain open and simply stare at the pale flesh before her. She can see Helena's pulse point fluttering against her neck.

"We could have lost everything." Helena's fingers glide rhythmically along the length of her spine, back and forth, comforting, and still Myka does not close her eyes. She simply watches H.G.'s heartbeat.

"And yet we triumphed." Frowning, Myka pulls back just enough so that she can look into the face of the woman before her. She is stunning, though truly there has never been a more poor descriptor, but there is so much more beauty beneath the surface. Beauty that Myka knows no one else will ever see. Because H.G. won't let them. Not like she's let Myka.

"And if we hadn't?" She counters, her hands moving to rest against Helena's shoulders. And if she looks hard enough, and she does, Myka can still see that pulse point, flickering away. Helena's frown deepens and in some desperate attempt to **see**, to **feel**, whatever it is that's wrong, she lifts a hand to Myka's face.

"Then we would have done our best, and likely gone out fighting." Her thumb brushes against the skin of Myka's cheek. "Together." And, as green eyes flutter closed, it immediately ceases. As though halted by an obstruction in the road. Something massive and omnipresent and so very obvious, H.G. should have seen it coming long before she finds herself at the foot of it. Myka eyes open once more to find Helena's face filled with half wonder, half confusion.

"But you wouldn't have known." And Myka voice is hoarse through a sudden impending onslaught of tears. "We'd have died and I'd never have been able to tell you-" But she doesn't need to say anything at all.

The last thing she sees, before lips cover her own in a kiss she's certain has been a century in the making, is Helena's smile.


End file.
